How to tune your bike

Published: 08 January 2010

If you've had your new bike for a while and you want to start 'tuning' it, one of the simplest ways is to alter the gearing by changing the front/rear sprockets.

If you lower the gearing that will improve acceleration as you use more of the higher gears more of the time. If you raie the gearing that will give the bike a more relaxed feel as you'll be doing less revs for a given road speed.

The easiest way to lower the gearing is to fit a front sprocket one tooth smaller, which will probably lower the top speed by seven per cent. When you do that the rear wheel will have to go back to take up the extra slack in the chain, so the wheelbase will be longer, which could slow the steering down a little, so you might want to drop the forks through the yokes by a few millimetres.

To raise the gearing by a similar percentage, switch the rear sprocket for one up to two teeth less, any more than that and you might find the standard chain won't stretch.

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